The Chocolate Debutante (7 page)

Harriet returned very quickly—he had expected her to take at least an hour, but she had been gone only fifteen minutes. She was wearing a carriage gown of gold velvet and a smart gold velvet hat, very small, tilted on one side of her head. Her hair, he noticed, was thick and curly and glossy.

“Where are we going?” asked Harriet when she was seated beside him in his carriage. He stretched his long, booted legs against the spatterboard and turned and smiled down at her. “Oh, just about. Here and there.”

He set the horses in motion. They drove smartly out of Berkeley Square. Harriet felt a sudden surge of exhilaration. As he made his way through the press of traffic in Piccadilly and then slowed as he found his way blocked by a government sledge surrounded by soldiers taking the national lottery to the Bank of England, he said, “Who are those ladies glaring at you? Do you know them, or have complete strangers suddenly taken you in dislike?”

He pointed with his whip.

Miss Barncastle and another member of the sisterhood, Miss Carrington, were standing at the edge of the pavement, glaring at Harriet.

She waved and smiled. They gave little half waves back, but looked at her with condemnation in their eyes.

“So you do know them,” commented the earl.

“Yes, they are dear friends of mine.”

“Indeed! And do all your dear friends look at you as if you had just risen from hell and smelled of brimstone?”

Harriet gave a reluctant laugh. “I fear they find me much changed.”

“In what way?”

“They fear I am become sadly frivolous.”

“I cannot think of anyone less frivolous, Miss Tremayne. Who exactly were those ladies?”

“A Miss Barncastle and a Miss Carrington. Before the advent of Susan, I would visit with them and similar… similar…”

“Spinsters?”

“Yes, but we would discuss books and articles and the rights of women.”

“But they must realize that such intellectual visits are put aside when one has a young female to launch upon the Season.”

“I think it is my changed appearance that offends them. They fear I am become sadly fashionable.”

“Ah, they are jealous.”

“But why? They are all independently wealthy. They can all afford the best of clothes and jewels.”

“They cannot buy your appearance, Miss Tremayne, or your grace of figure, your fine eyes, or your mouth.”

“You put me to the blush,” said Harriet severely. She tried to tell herself that such compliments were all part of social intercourse and never to be taken seriously, but she felt a warm glow start somewhere inside her. London seemed like a magic city. Sunshine gilded the roofs and buildings. The striped blinds over the windows of the houses fluttered in the wind.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“There is a tea garden in Chelsea by the river. Have you been there?”

“No, I hardly ever venture as far as Chelsea.”

“Your friends would approve.” His eyes mocked her. “No one frivolous or fashionable goes there, but the setting is pretty and it is not often that one gets a day as fine or as warm at this time of the year.”

The garden was as pretty as he had described it, with tables set out on the grass under the trees and with a fine view of the river.

“So what will you do, Miss Tremayne, when Miss Colville is safely off your hands? Is she an orphan?”

“No, you have forgotten. When you met me I was on my way to my sister’s to collect Susan.”

“And why cannot the fond mama bring her out?”

“My sister does not enjoy the best of health and I gather the Season can be very fatiguing.”

“So what will you do when it ends?”

“Return gratefully to my quiet life.”

“And your grim friends?”

“They are not grim!”

“True friends support one in all that one does, Miss Tremayne. In my humble opinion, had they been true friends, then they would have been helping you in your quest for a suitable husband for Miss Colville, not standing in Piccadilly, glaring at you.”

“You do not understand!”

“No, and I hope I never do. I know Lady Dancer. You mentioned her as being a friend of yours. Now, she appears all that is amiable.”

“Yes, she is very kind and has given up a great deal of her time to help me.”

“Perhaps you will make new friends. Have you considered that you yourself might marry?”

“I think we have discussed me enough. What about you, my lord? Are you really interested in marrying Susan?”

He looked at her in surprise. “Did I say so?”

“Oh, yes, that is the reason for this drive. You wish to ingratiate yourself with me so that your suit will be welcome.”

For a brief moment his eyes flashed with anger and she looked back at him, puzzled. Then his face cleared and he laughed. “I have never yet met a woman with less vanity than you, Miss Tremayne. Now, I, I have my modicum of vanity. When I was a boy, I used to pray that I would wake up one morning with hair as black as your own. Red hair is so unfashionable.”

Harriet looked at his dark red hair. “Yet you wear it unpowdered.”

“Ah, you see, I am hoping someone will love me truly despite my red hair.” He smiled into her large green eyes. “Do you think, Miss Tremayne, that a lady could love me for myself alone?”

“Many ladies would find it easy to love you, my lord.”

“Why? Pray tell me.”

“Your title and your fortune.”

“A sore wound, Miss Tremayne. You are supposed to say because of my striking looks.”

She gave a little sigh. “It is a wicked and mercenary world we live in. Despite her beauty, little Susan would be hard put to find suitors if she lacked a dowry.”

“She is so very beautiful, I think someone would want to marry her even if she had no fortune at all.”

“If they can find her awake enough to propose.”

“It would be a simple matter. A box of the very best chocolates and little Miss Susan would fall into anybody’s arms.”

“Oh, dear. Perhaps you can tell me which gentlemen are to be at the Season that she should be protected against… apart from you yourself.”

“Now, why should Miss Colville be protected from me?”

“She is very young and… and… pure and you keep a mistress.”

His face darkened. “The day becomes chilly,” he said. “Shall we go?”

Harriet bit her lip, wondering what had possessed her to make such a disgraceful remark. If Susan were to be kept from all the men in London who kept mistresses or visited whores, then she would have very few to choose from.

They drove in silence to Hyde Park toll, where they joined a queue of carriages. A smart little curricle lined with quilted white silk drew alongside. It was driven by a buxom brunette with dark, liquid eyes. She was dressed in the first stare of fashion.

“Dangerfield,” she called. “Where have you been? I have not seen you this age.”

He bowed and said, “I will call on you presently,” and then the carriages moved on.

“You did not introduce me,” said Harriet in a small voice.

“Naturally not,” he remarked in an icy voice.

Harriet felt very low. She was sure the stylish lady was the earl’s mistress.

Harriet found Bertha waiting for her in the drawing room. “What is this, you sly puss?” cried Bertha. “I have just heard from London’s greatest gossip that you were seen this day being driven by Dangerfield and that he seemed very happy in your company.”

Sighing, and untying the strings of her bonnet, Harriet said wearily, “Lord Dangerfield is cultivating my company with a view to courting Susan.”

“Oh, tish and fiddlesticks. He would have been so suitable for you. Is it not lowering when a man like Dangerfield waits this age to get married and then falls for some milk-and-water miss?”

“Well, as you first pointed out to me, men of Dangerfield’s age are marriageable, women of my age are not.”

“But you are so changed, so modish! Oh, it is all too bad.”

“Does… does Dangerfield have a mistress? Did you not say so? When we were making that call on the Marchioness of Trowbridge, I believe she said something to that effect.”

“He has a liaison with Mrs. Verity Palfrey. Do you know her?”

Harriet looked startled. “Why should I know such a creature?”

“She is very good ton. In fact, she was considered highly respectable at one time. Palfrey was considerably older than she. Very rich. He died of an apoplexy. Up till then, she had seemed such a quiet creature, but then she began to appear everywhere in rather shocking gowns—damped muslin, my dear—Roman sandals, and toenails stained with cochineal. Do you know Sir Thomas Jeynes?”

“No.”

“She had a passionate affair with him, and then two years ago she switched to Dangerfield. You
have
been out of the world for too long. ’Twas a monstrous scandal. Jeynes challenged Dangerfield to a duel, pistols in Hyde Park at dawn. Dangerfield is a first-class shot and merely winged him in the arm. The seconds said he could easily have killed him.”

“Oh,” said Harriet in a little voice. She could never in her wildest fantasies imagine two men fighting over
her.

“So how goes the fair Susan?”

“As usual. Which means I am increasingly worried about her. Young Courtney came to call with his mother, eminently suitable, and she was nowhere to be found. Then Dangerfield called and wagered me he could find her. Can you believe this, Bertha? Susan was fast asleep on a shelf of the press in her room with her thumb in her mouth. She had been eating chocolates again.”

Bertha looked shrewdly at Harriet. “And what was the wager?”

“That I would save the supper dance for him at the Trowbridge ball.”

“And then he took you driving for all the world to see! Hardly the behavior of a man who is enamored of your niece.”

“He
told
me,” said Harriet, “that he wanted to get into my good books with a view to courting Susan.”

“And that’s
exactly
what he said?”

“I cannot remember the exact words, but that is the sum and substance of them.”

“And what do you feel about Dangerfield for your niece, now that you know him better?”

“I do not think him at all suitable.”

Bertha looked down and played with the sticks of her fan. “Now, why did I think you would say that?”

Harriet waited uneasily in the drawing room for Susan to make an appearance. They were about to set off for the Trowbridge ball. Harriet was wearing a dark green silk gown of a modish cut. She felt uneasily that the neckline was a trifle too low, but the dressmaker had said it was the latest fashion. On her head was the new diamond tiara and she had a fine diamond necklace about her neck. Her gloves were of lighter green kid, as were her little dancing slippers. She had fretted over the great question of whether to paint or not to paint. How many times had she and her friends jeered at society women who smeared their faces like savages. But the realization that her cheeks were a trifle pale had made her apply a little rouge, although with a guilty feeling that she was betraying some important cause. She worried, too, that she had wasted too much time, effort, and money on bedecking herself. All eyes would be on Susan and she would have to content herself with sitting with the other chaperones and mothers against the wall. But Lord Dangerfield had said he would take her up for the supper dance.

When Susan walked into the room followed by Harriet’s lady’s maid, Harriet thought that once the gentlemen in the room saw Susan, her own existence would be forgotten.

Susan was wearing a thin white muslin gown with little puffed sleeves, a low neckline, and flounces of muslin that frothed around her ankles like white foam. A coronet of silver roses ornamented her hair, and she wore a white overdress of silver-spangled gauze. Her only ornament was a thin string of seed pearls about her neck. Her wide blue eyes shone and her complexion, despite a constant diet of sweetmeats, was flawless.

Mr. Charles Courtney was to escort them, and when he entered the room shortly after Susan and Harriet saw the way he gazed adoringly at the girl, she felt a surge of triumph. With any luck, young Courtney would propose quite soon, and then all her worries would be over.

So this, then, thought Harriet, would be her own first London ball. For the very first time she felt a little nagging pang that she was so old. Her very fear of marriage had made her miss a lot of fun, she thought wistfully.

But what was the alternative? The chattel of some man and years and years of childbearing.

As she walked up the red Turkey carpeted stairs to the ballroom at the Marchioness of Trowbridge’s Grosvenor Square home, Harriet glanced at Susan beside her and felt a rush of sheer pride. The girl was exquisite.